Fosfor Tikona In Blue-Green Acrylic Review

[dinuraj]

Hi,

 

I posted this review on my blog.

https://inkpensblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/fosfor-tikona-in-blue-green-acrylic/

 

Fosfor pens is a reputed custom pen maker in India. Manoj Deshmukh (Mr. fosfor) has built up a reputation as a master craftsman and high quality pen maker. I had put my name in his order book for an Islander and a Tikona in March. After waiting for six months to get to the top of the waiting list, the pens (I added one more pen to the bunch in between) arrived at my desk recently. My unboxing pictures are here Among them was the beautiful and uniquely shaped Fosfor Tikona in Dark Blue-Green Acrylic which Mr. Manoj himself cast.

 

I chose to order the Tikona due to its unique shape. The name "Tikona" means triangle and it is a triangular pen. Similar to Visconti's circled square or squared circle pens, it is a circled triangle kind of pen. The shape is the main thing that drew me to it and of course, Fosfor's reputation in FPN as well. The ordering process was very smooth. I filled up the enquiry form in Fosfor's website and Mr. Manoj responded the very next day. After a couple of emails and a phone call later, I put in a request for a Tikona in dark blue translucent acrylic. The material was created by artist himself as I mentioned earlier. So, he had the complete freedom to tune the colour. The first cast turned out to be too dark and the pen was opaque. So, a different colour combination was tried and I loved the colour and subtle translucency. I loved the frequent updates on twitter and email during the progress of the making.

 

It is a rather girthy pen. The barrel was thicker than I expected. The section of the pen is of normal diameter and the barrel has thickness of about 18mm. The cap threads on to the end of nib section and there is a significant step from the barrel to the section. The polyester cast seems to be really dense as the pen is a bit heavy for an acrylic pen. I needed some help to carry the pen as shown below :-)

 

 

Even though, I was a bit taken aback by the unexpected girth, I fell in love with it as I wrote a few pages with it. It was very comfortable to write with. Moreover, the pens looked awesome. The material was semi translucent exactly as I wanted it to be. It is not transparent enough to see the converter inside. But, I can see the different shades of the colour on the thicker and thinner parts of the pen. This was what I wanted and I loved it. But, I need to mention some problems as well. The barrel and section have some pits and dark dots/spots. I assume that they are there because of the casting process rather than the turning process as the other Fosfor pens were actually flawless. But, that is the charm of a custom pen from a custom cast acrylic. It came with a standard international cartridge and a silver colour #6 fine Schmidt nib. It had a silver coloured clip to match the nib. I went with the clip thinking that I would carry the pen in my pocket. But, this will live and travel in my pen case due to its size and weight. So, I should have gone with a clipless option in retrospect. The triangular shape would have prevented rolling anyway.

 

 

Now, comes to the writing experience. The nib wrote very smoothly and the ink flow was very nice. It was one of the smoothest Schmidt nibs that I have used (actually, the Islander's nib was smoother. But, it was a medium nib) . I suspect that Mr. Manoj has done some tuning. It had good ink flow. The ink that I chose for this pen was Noodler's 54th Massachusetts which is a wet ink in my experience ( I had to stop using it in my Pilot VP due to heavy flow). This ink matched the colour of the pen very well as it is blue-green or dark teal when written with a fine nib. (It is almost black with broader nibs)

 

 

The pen is back heavy due to the heavy barrel. But, I did not feel any fatigue or discomfort when writing down this review. It was almost five A4 pages. I was worried a bit about the deep step on the barrel. One of the corner's of the triangle rested against the webbing between the thumb and the index finger and my normal hold was well below the step. The step touched my thumb sometimes when I tried to hold it higher for faster writing, but it did not bother me. The threads on the section were also very smooth and did not cause any problem.

 

One more peculiarity that I should mention is that the alignment of the corners on the barrel and pen. It requires some tweaking to get the correct alignment after re-inking. As the cap threads are on the section, the section has to positioned/tightened correctly to the barrel so as to keep the cap aligned to the section when it is closed tightly. There is an O' ring between the section and the barrel so that there is some leeway when tightening the section. It takes two or three attempts to adjust the section and correctly align the cap and barrel. The O' ring will help to keep the seal if it needs to be converted to an eyedropper fill pen.

 

 

In total, it is a wonderful pen. I loved it. I expect it to be an attention grabber due its shape, colour and size. I will be using it very regularly, even though I will not be carrying it around in my pocket, as the nib is very smooth and the pen is very comfortable to hold. I am happy with the finish of the pen and surely will be going back to Fosfor for future purchases. It was actually an awesome experience and privilege to work with a master craftsman on creating this pen or should I say work of art.

 

thanks,

Dinuraj

[LizEF]

Dude, love those photos! Nice review too.

[markiv]

Love the pictures and the pen itself. Congratulations.

[RobertJWarren]

Dinuraj

 

Great review and great pictures!

[hariharan]

went through few of your recent reviews and am happy for you with your recent collections.

The photographs in this review are beautiful.

 

I agree with you that revealing the converter and in fact the nib and section inside a demonstrator is not something i appreciate. I too prefer translucent ones for the same reason.

[visvamitra]

Thank you for informative review. This pen looks very nice.

[dinuraj]

Dude, love those photos! Nice review too.

 

 

Love the pictures and the pen itself. Congratulations.

 

 

Dinuraj

 

Great review and great pictures!

 

 

Thank you for informative review. This pen looks very nice.

Thank you for your nice comments.

[dinuraj]

went through few of your recent reviews and am happy for you with your recent collections.

The photographs in this review are beautiful.

 

I agree with you that revealing the converter and in fact the nib and section inside a demonstrator is not something i appreciate. I too prefer translucent ones for the same reason.

Thanks Hariharan.

[mehandiratta]

lovely pictures...

is the step down comfortable from barrel to grip section

[dinuraj]

lovely pictures...

is the step down comfortable from barrel to grip section

 

Thanks Vaibhav. The step did not bother me. Sometimes, the step rested on my thumb and it felt good.

[Ayami_109]

amazing pen! I'm definitely considering ordering a Fosfor pen now!

[amberleadavis]

Great pictures and terrific props. Thank you for the review.